100+ of the Best Resources for Learning Music Apps, Games, Courses & More! 1 Making Music Matter Seemingly every day, dedicated musicians are leveraging technology to create AMAZING new tools for students of all levels. We put together this e-book to inspire you to try new ideas, hone your skills, make new music and have fun while doing it. There are THOUSANDS of apps & websites out there that promise to help you learn music, which is really exciting, but can also be pretty intimidating. We spent way too much time combing through the Apple App & Google Play stores, various blogs, and asking our professional colleagues, so you could have these high-quality recommendations. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it! App you’d like us to consider for the next edition? Good or bad experience you had with a website we recommended? Difficulty getting an app working with the gear you bought from us? Cool song that you wrote using one of these tools? Just email [email protected] – he’ll be glad to hear from you and help however he can, if warranted. 2 Here’s how we’ve organized this book: • We have 4 main units, with 4-5 segments in each unit, with 8-15 resources for each segment. • Many of the resources could be in multiple segments, but to reduce duplication, we simply put it in the segment we thought it best fit. We have a “See Also” blurb to recommend other segments you might want to check out for related apps. • In each section, we feature 3 apps that want to especially highlight. We try to pick 3 fairly different apps, to highlight what’s possible within a category. We still encourage you to check out all the apps in the category. The top 3 are not necessarily the best of the best. • Because prices for apps / services can change frequently, we’ve removed references to prices on here. That being said, we will mention the basic business model – free, in-app upgrades, subscription, etc. And if it’s cheap or expensive in comparison to other products and services. We highlight any links to our own products and services with this emoticon. We think you’ll like what we have to offer and it helps support a small local business. Win-win! 3 About Family Piano Co If you can’t practice, you can’t progress. If this list has you all excited to play, but you’re still pounding keys on an older keyboard, Family Piano Co has some really good options for you. We have a beautiful selection of new and used pianos, both uprights and grands, plenty of which are budget-friendly for folks just starting off. We offer 100% trade-ups with all used acoustic pianos, most of which come with our three- year-warranty, so you can rest assured you will be completely satisfied with any purchase you make. In fact, our skilled technicians spend 2-4 days fixing up each piano, making sure it’s perfect right before it’s delivered to your home. If price is a big issue, we have a flexible rent-to-own program, and financing options as well. In addition to acoustic pianos, we also have many digital keyboards and pianos from Kawai, Casio, and Roland. Any we have in stock are at the point of being viable learning tools for most students and musicians. It can be daunting knowing the exact differences between each model, but our knowledgeable staff can walk you through them all so you can pick the best possible option. We price-match Amazon, and other major online retailers, to ensure you get the best price, and additionally, you can take digitals home immediately, get more hands-on training from us, and you support a local business on top of that! So whenever you’re ready, we’d love to personally walk you through your options, answer your questions, and make sure you have an enjoyable, low-pressure, no-haggle experience here. Feel free to call us at (847) 775-1988, email us at info@ familypiano.com, or fill out the form to the right to get in touch! 4 Table of Contents Section I: Everyday Tools 6 Top 7 Metronomes 7 Top 7 Tuners 10 Top 12 Practice Journals 13 Top 14 Apps from Instrument Makers 18 Section II: Fun Ways to Drill Skills 24 Top 11 Games for Young Children 25 Top 7 Games for Rhythm Development 31 Top 5 Games for Note Recognition 34 Top 11 Resources for Music Theory 36 Top 12 Resources for Chords & Backing Tracks 40 Section III: Make Music 44 Top 12 Sources for Sheet Music 46 Top 12 Tools for Composing (& Organizing) Sheet Music 50 Top 11 DAWs 54 Top 13 Tools For Musical Collaboration 58 Section IV: Complete Courses for Learning An Instrument 62 Top 13 Games for Learning How to Play Piano / Guitar 63 Top 6 Video Courses for Piano 68 Top 8 Video Courses for Guitar 71 Top 13 Video Courses for Multiple Instruments 74 Bonus: Our Favorite YouTube Channels 77 5 Section I: Everyday Tools Most musicians already have everyday tools, like a metronome, a tuner, and a practice journal. Those might suffice. But especially for those starting out without any of these tools or those looking for more advanced features, we wanted to round up the latest and greatest. As we dived into what these apps could do, we were amazed to discover some really nifty things they could do and some nice ways they could make our lives easier. We hope you find this section helpful. 6 Top 7 Metronomes While many apps have some basic built-in clickers, it’s amazing how sophisticated metronome apps have gotten. Many of them have the ability to program in all of the characteristics of a song (including time signature changes) and then to make ordered playlists of these song settings. Many of them allow you to start slow and then automatically get a little faster every 4 measures, for example, to help with drilling a particular passage. Many of them have a variety of sounds and the ability to choose which beats get emphasis. See Also: The Rhythm Development section. Also, if you have a digital piano, it’s probably worth checking out the capabilities of your built-in metronome. We do sell physical metronomes if you prefer those. Soundbrenner Pulse Soundbrenner Pulse is a watch that you can wear that has you feel the beat, rather than necessarily listening to it. It syncs up to their well-regarded and feature-rich Metronome app (which you can use without buying the physical Pulse). The app can also work with Ableton Link and has multiplayer sync. The app is free of cost, free of ads and on both Android and iOS. 7 Stage Metronome Stage Metronome is a free app with no ads or monetization for Android and iOS, which is really nice. Lots of features that you would otherwise need to pay for. It has everything you want on one screen. Time Guru Time Guru has the unique feature of muting some of the clicks, so that you rely less and less on the constant tick of the metronome. You can control whether this is done in a systematic way or randomly. It’s otherwise an aesthetically pleasing, feature rich- app that will probably meet all of your metronome needs. 8 Pro Metronome Pro Metronome is a very feature-rich metronome. The free version is perfectly workable for most students, but paying a few bucks for the pro version unlocks polyrhythms, subdivisions, playlists, warm-up mode, and more. Has a dark leather and wood aesthetic. Beatronome Beatronome is a very sophisticated metronome mixed with a sophisticated rhythm trainer. You can notate specific beats, save them, organize them into practice sessions and then train them on progressively faster tempos. Practice+ Practice+ is a clean, customizable & robust metronome app that includes their very accurate tuner. Looks to incorporate all the features (plus some!) of their very popular Metronome+app. Has recording capability. Tempo Advance Tempo Advance is an Editor’s Choice app and has been developed in conjunction with the drummer of Dream Theatre, an early fan of the app. This is probably the most feature-rich and customizable app of them all, with especially robust polyrhythm options. 9 Top 7 Tuners Here are some of the best tuning apps we could find. Many other apps have tuners built-in and that may suffice for you, but these particularly stand out for their accuracy and features. These are mostly for guitar and other stringed instruments, since pianos require tuning by a well-trained professional (otherwise you can make it worse). Plus, piano tuning apps are not cheap. We can tune your piano! We are not currently making house calls, but we’re happy to add your name to our waiting list. Snark Tuner Snark is the leading clip-on tuner. Because it clips on to your instrument and can measure the soundwave vibrations through the clip, it’s more accurate than the ones that use your cellphone’s microphone. We sell these for the same price as online retailers. 10 GuitarTuna GuitarTuna is made by Yousician and is advertised as the world’s #1 tuning app. It has a super accurate tuner for guitar, bass, ukulele, violin and more, plus a library of alternative tunings, and games for learning your chords. It’s free for both android and iOS, with a paid option to unlock more features.